The Need for a "Turn off Auto Renewal" Button for Trello Billing

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Hi Folks at Trello, can we please have a button to turn off auto renewal, currently this is not available or at-least clearly visible. 

The only options available at the moment are to cancel the subscription or explore a different plan but what would be ideal would be a button to turn off auto renewal like other online service/vendors provide for billing.

thanks

Nav

[Alex Waite]

Hi Navjot, I'm not sure this is something we will consider.

If you could, hypothetically, turn off auto-renewal, then you run the risk of your subscription getting cancelled if we try to bill you and are unable to. This includes both your monthly/annual charges, but also if you add a new billable user to your workspace, we charge a pro-rated fee before then including them in the next renewal. If we can't bill you for the users you add, then the subscription gets cancelled. 

Trello upgrades are subscriptions - therefore we need availability to your credit card to renew your subscription each month/year. To cancel a subscription is to turn off auto renewal.

[Giovani Spagnolo]

Hi, I support the "turn off auto renewal" because sometimes you need to manage manual renewals, or if you are really planning ahead a product change. As of "you run the risk of your subscription getting cancelled if we try to bill you and are unable to" this could be addressed by some reminder emails 1 month, 15 days and 3 days before the date the account being cancelled. What do you think?

[Alex Waite]

@Giovani Spagnolo as I explained above, this doesn't work if your team then adds a new billable user to the workspace - we expect to be able to bill instantly for that person. You can't send reminder emails in this scenario, as we don't know when you're going to add new billable users. 

If you're planning to change to a new product, you can always cancel the subscription, which means you have access to features up until your next renewal date, which is essentially what you're looking for! You can then cancel the cancellation if you so choose. 

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Hi Alex, Hope all is well and thanks for coming back to me, really appreciate it.

I think we are dealing with 2 things here -

1. Renewals (auto renewal)
2. Adding new billable users

The arguments you made are fair for point 2, having the card on file for payment of new billable users is fine, it's fair and makes sense.

But for Point 1 (renewals) it doesn't make sense not allowing the users to turn off auto renewals without cancelling the subscription (assuming they are on an annual subscription, maybe the option doesn't really suit for monthly subscriptions), opting out of auto renewals is providing more control to the user and is very common practice.

It would had made sense if each billable user had a renewal date based on the day they were added in that case un-automated renewals would had been a pain for the customer. But as you mentioned the payments for new billable users are Pro-rated meaning adjusted for the remaining period of the overall subscription and the next renewal for each user or the account will be on the same date.

Example: say the first batch of 5 users were added in January and then we added another 5 in March, since pricing is pro-rate, all the 10 accounts will have the same renewal date (based on the renewal of the first batch)

So in that case why not allow the users to opt out of auto renewals and still have a card on file for adding new users. Everyone wins.

The reasoning for the push is most corporations have internal processes that require budget approval for renewals before a renewal is made and having auto renewal on means less control & potentially auto renewing un-intentionally without the appropriate internal approval making things complex for everyone.

Thanks

Navjot

Product Manager at Yahoo

[Alex Waite]

Hi Navjot, I understand that, but cancelling the subscription (then restarting it if you want to renew) already does that (re: managing renewals). On top of that, the organisation can figure out if they want to renew before the renewal date and cancel if need be.

If you require more advanced billing, then potentially Yahoo could look at an Enterprise subscription. 

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Thanks Alex, Jira is mostly the staple across the teams I believe and currently my team is testing out Trello for certain needs. So maybe at some point in the future enterprise version may make sense.

But in general I would be a proponent of having the ability to opt out of auto renewals.

I think we are good to close this request for now. 

thanks 

nav